


familiar

by 28ghosts



Category: Midsomer Murders - All Media Types
Genre: Flashbacks, Getting Together, M/M, injury - no gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-27 01:14:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18293861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/28ghosts/pseuds/28ghosts
Summary: Gavin Troy gets used to Barnaby, and then he ends up fond of him, and then he ends up a bit in love with him, ofcoursehe does.





	familiar

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Moon_Blitz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moon_Blitz/gifts).



Troy’s first case with Barnaby goes about how most cases that Troy has with Barnaby will go. The only difference is really that they have to be introduced first, in this case by Causton’s CC, who seems a bit eager to get introductions done with. “DCI Tom Barnaby, DS Gavin Troy,” she says cooly. “I wish there was more time to get you adjusted, DS Troy, but what with the case in Stanton…”

Barnaby’s handshake is firm but professional, none of the hand-crushing firmness of DCIs with something to prove. Troy tries his best to sort of shake hands the same way, but Barnaby’s staring at him a bit too keenly for Troy to play it entirely casual. Here’s the DCI who Troy’s bound to spend at least the next year with, and they’re just being thrown together into a case with no preamble?

“Good to meet you, Troy,” Barnaby says.

“Likewise, sir.”

“We’ll have time to get you situated soon, but for now…” Barnaby brushes one hand over the front of his suit. It’s a plain sort of suit, a career DCI’s suit, no aspirations towards higher office. “More important things at hand. Right, then. There’s been a suspicious death in Midsomer Stanton. You drive.”

Barnaby lops the keys at Troy, and Troy just barely catches them. He’d be annoyed with Barnaby if he wasn’t struggling just to keep up with the man. “A suspicious death, sir?”

“A beekeeper, Troy, stung to death. Fancy that!”

Barnaby actually sounds pleased. Troy thumbs through the keyring as he follows Barnaby out of the building, into the mild spring air. It’s a very nice day for someone to have been murdered during. “Do you think it’s murder?”

Barnaby pops open the passenger door. “Oh, if we’re lucky,” he says. He doesn’t quite smile, but his blue eyes light up with something Troy might, if pressed, describe as boyish mirth. “And I don’t know about you, Troy, but I am feeling lucky today.”

Troy considers it and decides he hasn’t the slightest idea how he’s feeling. Probably not lucky, though. “Er, yessir,” he says.

“Off we go, then?” Barnaby says, and it takes Troy a moment to realize that Barnaby’s waiting for him to unlock the car.

He drops the keys in his rush to get the car unlocked, and Barnaby doesn’t laugh, but it feels like a near thing. Troy can’t stop thinking about it during the drive, and Barnaby’s clipped instructions don’t help his temper.

“Is this the way it’s usually going to go?” Troy asks, inadvisably impertinent, once they get Midsomer Stanton. “Me driving, you wincing the whole way.”

“Maybe,” Barnaby says. He adjusts his suit jacket, eyeing the manor they’ve parked in front of. “More important things to mind now, though, wouldn’t you say?”

Maybe.

* * *

It only takes a month for Troy to realize how damned good at his job Barnaby is. A bit after that is when Troy realizes, staring at his reflection in his bathroom mirror and fussing with his tie, that his determination to impress Barnaby is perhaps not entirely professional.

Troy then succeeds for several months in not thinking about that too much. Maybe he’s especially pleased, every now and then, with Barnaby telling him he’s right on about something. So be it. Best to want to please your DCI, right?

And then it takes six months for Troy to step in front of a knife meant for Barnaby, and he does it without thinking, too. A case in Midsomer Wallop. A not-so-clever counterfeiter and an illegitimate heir, locked in a blackmail detente, both of them with it out for Barnaby--

Troy doesn’t have to think twice. There’s an awful pain jolting through him, and then things get a bit fuzzy.

Hopefully Barnaby isn’t too disappointed with him.

* * *

Troy wakes up with his tongue feeling fuzzy and Barnaby in a hospital room with him.

“Sir,” Troy says, “why are you here?”

“Well, I certainly don’t have to be. Would you rather I left?”

Troy just barely has his wits about him enough to say “No” without sounding too pathetic about it. 

“You, Troy, are overthinking this.” Barnaby reaches over to pat at Troy’s ankle under the white hospital sheet, just familiar and intimate enough to make Troy’s heart lurch in his chest. “I’m here because I’d like to be. Is that good enough an explanation for you?”

Troy considers it. Barnaby settles back in the stiff-backed hospital chair and opens up the file he’d brought with him. He’s wearing his silver-rimmed reading glasses at the end of his his nose, the same pair he always wears. Troy’s never remembered anything about anyone’s glasses before, but Barnaby is - well, he’s different. For reasons Troy would rather not think about.

“Yes, sir,” he says.

Barnaby tsks, rummaging through the papers in his lap. His hair is a little greyer than it was the first day he and Troy had met, and it’s getting a bit long; Barnaby always keeps his hair short, shorter than Troy does. “No need for ‘sir’ here, Troy, I think. How are you feeling?”

“Gavin,” says Troy.

That, at least, gets Barnaby to look up from his case files. “You’re feeling Gavin? That doesn’t make much sense.”

And for bloody once, Troy has it in him to ignore Barnaby doing his best to be distracting; he sits up a bit, manages to stare Barnaby dead in the eyes. “If you’re visiting just since you’d like to, you can call me Gavin, then, sir.” Shit. “Not sir, er…”

“Tom,” Barnaby says. His eyes are lit up the same way they always light up whenever the brass gives Barnaby an especially strange case. Barnaby likes those, the odd ones. “If you’re going to be Gavin, then Tom for me, I think.”

“Tom,” Troy tries saying; it’s strange. “I feel terrible.”

“Well, that’s expected.” Barnaby -- Tom -- nudges his glasses up his nose. “You were stabbed, I believe.”

“Yes,” Troy says, and just barely doesn’t say ‘sir.’ He skims his fingers over his stomach, feels the IV tug at his skin. “I was, wasn’t I.”

“Do you remember?” Tom asks, affably, paging through his files.

“Remember what?”

“No, then, I suppose,” Tom -- Barnaby? -- says, as if to himself. “Just as well. Say, Gavin, what do you think of this? A potter in Midsomer Roundabout, death allegedly an accident…”

* * *

It takes Troy a few weeks to recover. It’s mostly boring. Getting back to the job is a relief, and the first morning he’s due to pick up Barnaby before swinging into the station, he can’t keep himself from humming in the shower.

“Toast,” Barnaby says from the curb, when Troy swings round to pick him up, “for you.”

“Oh!” Even better than barging into Barnaby’s house to steal some is having Barnaby just bring it. Troy throws the car into gear with one hand, then takes the toast. “Thank you, sir.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Barnaby’s hand pass over the gearshift. Barnaby’s hand settles over Troy’s knee. Familiar, warm. “No need for ‘sir’ ‘til we get to the station, I think,” Barnaby says lightly, too lightly. “Unless you think otherwise?”

Which is, damn it all, right when Troy remembers--

* * *

_“Talk to me, Troy, that’s an order.”_

_Troy is mostly delirious from the whole having-been-stabbed thing and all. There’s pain, mostly, and an odd sense of wetness down his front -- blood, he thinks muzzily. “Yes, sir,” he manages to say._

_“There we go, good.” Barnaby’s voice. “You’re going to be fine, Troy, and help’s on the way. You’ve been needlessly brave, we would have had them without your...heroics.” Barnaby sounds amused the way he usually does, but more serious than Troy’s used to, too. “Needless, really, Troy. What did you go and do that for?”_

_“Couldn’t -- couldn’t let you get hurt, could I, sir?”_

_“Yes, you absolutely could,” Barnaby says._

_Troy tries to shake his head. He’s a bit light-headed. “No, sir.”_

_“Yes--”_

_“No.” Troy’s head is in Barnaby’s lap, he realizes, and he tries to sit up. “I -- I couldn’t--” He looks up, and there’s Barnaby, staring at him all bright-blue-eyed and oddly understanding._

_Right. How’d he think he could keep something like this from Barnaby? He really does feel unwell now, and he’d twist away if he were haler._

_Except Barnaby smiles, then sighs. “Ah, Gavin,” he says. He takes Troy’s right hand, and he kisses the back of it chastely. “You think far too highly of me, I think.”_

_“Impossible,” Troy says, and then everything goes to black._

* * *

It should bother him more that Barnaby knows. Right? Shouldn’t it? 

But Barnaby buys better bread and better butter than Troy does, and his toast is consequentially much better than anything Troy has ever prepared for himself. He jams half it it into his mouth at once and has to swallow twice. “Right then,” he says.

And Barnaby hadn’t seemed upset. He hadn’t seemed upset at all. Which means there’s a chance--

He stomps on the gas maybe a bit harder than he needs to. Barnaby’s -- Tom’s -- fingers curl into his thigh. Troy doesn’t mind.

It’s not a bad drive, from Tom’s place to the station. Troy finds himself not minding driving at all.


End file.
